


No one leaves by the door they enter

by lonelywalker



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Age Difference, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 06:18:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3346670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hartley Rathaway speaks six languages. He plays almost flawless chess. He sees schematics in his dreams. And no one ever wanted him before Harrison Wells offered him the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No one leaves by the door they enter

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Morten Harket's "End of the Line".

Some days it seems as though Hartley has spent his entire life with men who could never want him. They sit next to him in bars and taxis and the lab, and of course they began with his father all those years ago. Hartley had never had to come out to be shunned and renounced by the Rathaways. He’d never had to make a move on any of the men to know he’d be rejected. He knows what he is more than who he is. He is short and uncharismatic, too intense to be cute, too intelligent to be interesting. Hartley Rathaway speaks six languages. He plays almost flawless chess. He sees schematics in his dreams. And no one ever wanted him before Harrison Wells offered him the world.

Harrison is… What is Harrison? Harrison is a series of impressions that never exactly coalesce into a person. He is relentlessly monochrome clothing and glasses that become penetrating blue eyes for a fleeting moment every once in a while. He is a genius beyond even Hartley’s understanding of what a genius can be. For a long, long time, Hartley never saw him eat, never knew if he slept, never saw even an inkling of skin below the neck or wrist. But Harrison speaks Latin like another deeply devoted and deviant Catholic schoolboy. _Oh_ , Hartley thought the first time he heard it, and there it was like a secret handshake: _I know who you are._

“It’s late,” Harrison says one night in the Cortex. 

Hartley pays no attention. It’s always late. He didn’t sign on to be a nine-to-five guy, not even a nine-to-nine guy. He’s too impatient and too much of a perfectionist to go home. Even Ramon has won a tiny modicum of respect for having the same attitude, up to his elbows in grease and oil at all hours of the night. Ramon probably lives in his mom’s basement, but is Hartley’s apartment any better? No one brings him mac and cheese with a smile. No one worries that he’s not getting enough sleep. 

“ _Hartley_ ,” Harrison says in that sweetly coercive tone. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

There’s just enough affection in his voice to make Hartley look up, and just enough ambiguity in the words to make Hartley say: “Fine. Five minutes.”

The lab has a car service that’s mostly used by the staff who leave after the Central City buses stop for the night. The lab also has its own vehicles for off-site testing at the airstrip and elsewhere, and Hartley’s almost certain Harrison has a car of his own (or a motorcycle – Hartley’s had some delightful daydreams about a motorcycle). But Harrison calls for a car and they go.

As a child, Hartley had always subscribed to the belief that one should never think about what one wanted most, lest it be snatched away. Then the church had taught him he should never think about what he wanted most, lest he commit mortal sins. For one or both of these reasons, Hartley sits in the back of the car and rubs his thumb against the rough edge of his seatbelt, and very much does _not_ think about where they are going, or why.

Harrison smells of nothing. This is one of the curious things about him, although Hartley is sure no one else has ever noticed. Harrison wears no cologne, is never draped in fragrances of soap and shampoo. But there’s no sweat either. If Hartley hadn’t shaken his hand, felt Harrison’s clapped against his shoulder, he would have felt like he was working with a ghost.

Hartley glances at him, stares back down at his hands, clasped now, fingernails scrupulously clean. “ _Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum._ ” The Latin rite of contrition. He’d learned the words like a song as a child, without knowing what they meant. There’s still that innocence in them now.

“Feeling guilty, Hartley?”

“Feeling as though I looked away from the board.” Hartley glances over again. “Something changed while I wasn’t paying attention.”

Harrison isn’t looking at him, but he is smiling. “ _Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis_.” Perhaps that was also something Hartley had always liked about him: in his black suit and black shirts he could have been a priest at leisure. Someone who guarded mysteries, who always knew the answers.

“Do you still believe?” he’d asked Harrison when he first discovered their shared fluency. There was no question that he once had. They all once had.

Harrison had plucked a bishop from the board, deftly swiveled his knight onto the same square. “I believe in a world after this one.”

“And God?”

“Is a tyrant,” Harrison had said, his tone bitterer than his smile. “I’ll follow someone brighter.”

Now the streets are further from the density of the city, out in the boundaries where the Rathaways’ select few friends live. Not a desert Harrison is going to bury him in, but the other option scares him almost as much.

“What about my future sins? Do you absolve me of them too?”

The car stops. Harrison lays a hand on his forearm, over his coat. “I’m afraid you’ll have to commit them first.”

Harrison Wells lives in a house that could only be immensely unimpressive to the only son of the Rathaways. But Hartley hasn’t set foot in anywhere so vast, so beautifully designed, in what seems like a million years. These days his own apartment contains little more than a bed he rarely sleeps in. The former Rathaway heir has become very used to dozing with his head on Harrison’s desk, or wedged into a warm corner by the pipeline. So he stands by the entrance and stares while Harrison hangs up both their coats and switches on the lights, the fire, the music. Even the air seems different. Colder, despite the glass-encased flames at the heart of the building.

“I assume you don’t need to be told not to throw stones,” he says, remembering himself and joining Harrison at the bar. There’s already a half-full glass waiting for him. 

Harrison smiles. “Not my design. I needed somewhere to live. This was available.”

“I’m not certain I believe it myself, but apparently there are some residences in the city that don’t cover more than a football field.”

“A myth, I’m sure.” Harrison’s glasses tic-tac down onto the bar and, as Hartley drinks, Harrison closes his eyes.

Contact lenses were never an option for Hartley, who’d investigated the possibility _very_ thoroughly as an awkward teen. Laser surgery terrifies him on a purely irrational level. And besides, he’s not fooling himself that throwing away the glasses would suddenly make him into a chiseled jock stud like Ronnie Raymond. But Harrison… Harrison wears them like a prop, like a mask. Hartley’s seen him take them off and talk to people across the room or read fine type on a screen. It’s easy to understand why, though. Without the glasses his eyes are distractingly blue, the planes of his face just too perfectly honed. He looks like a different person. He looks like the rockstar some pop-sci magazines make him out to be. And no quantum physicist who isn’t a geeky nerd could ever be taken seriously.

When Harrison opens his eyes, Hartley is watching.

 _What now?_ he thinks to fill the anxious space in his mind. The answer is already there. _Oh God._

There have already been a few times he’s been a hair’s breadth from trying and testing his luck. But he could have been so very wrong, and for Harrison having a gay protégé and knowing that gay protégé wanted to fuck him could have been an unbridgeable gap. Harrison, though, Harrison knows. Harrison isn’t stupid. Harrison knows how Hartley covets his time, his hand on Hartley’s shoulder, his “you’re my guy” every now and then when Hartley needs it most. Harrison notices when Hartley flushes, when his pants are undeniably tented, and he has always said nothing.

“Shhh,” Harrison says now, and slams him into the wall.

His shoulder blades are on fire, bruised from that moment, Icarus’ wings ripped out at the root. But Harrison is kissing him, which is an answer Hartley already somehow knew. Hartley’s been kissed by a lot of men who didn’t mean it, who used it as shorthand for _just hurry up and blow me_. Which was all right, as far as it went. If that had been what Harrison’s kiss meant, he knows he would be on his knees on that cold stone floor in a second. But Harrison kisses, pushes, licks along the line of Hartley’s lips and finds Hartley’s tongue, and doesn’t stop. 

Hartley pulls at Harrison’s bottom lip, tilts his head, and kisses again. He wants what’s beyond chaste, deep beyond that, far further than Harrison might have ever let anyone go. He lifts his arms up between Harrison’s, slides his fingers through Harrison’s perpetually tousled, almost-black hair, and holds on.

He wants to beg, to whine _oh God, oh God_ and grab one of Harrison’s hands – now flat against the pillar on either side of his shoulders – and show him just how much Hartley wants him. But all he can do is moan breathlessly, helplessly, his thumbs on Harrison’s cheeks. His cock is already full, hot, pressing urgently against the crotch of his slacks, and he needs Harrison to touch much more of him than his lips. _Please please please._ Might he come in his pants? He might. He’s never been closer to it and further from self control.

When Harrison moves it’s to grip him at the waist and lift him, slide him up the pillar, shoving Hartley’s thighs up by his waist. If only he were a girl. And wearing a skirt. The hesitant idea of having Harrison Wells _in_ him is becoming thrillingly real.

“Please,” he does finally say now, now that Harrison is pressed up against him and Hartley can feel the vibrant heat of his body, the answering need at his groin. He grips Harrison’s shoulders, wants to rip the jacket away. “Please. _Harrison_.”

There are twin daybeds in the lounge behind them, under that massive glass ceiling. The perfect place to bed conquests you don’t want to sully your private rooms. Never has the idea of being someone’s conquest seemed so sweet as it does in Harrison’s arms.

But Harrison – strangely strong Harrison – sets him down on the bar between their glasses. Hartley keens a little at the loss of body against body, bucks into him, pulls him in, yet Harrison is unlooping Hartley’s belt, unbuttoning his fly. “Oh Jesus.”

He can feel Harrison feeling the shape of him through those white cotton briefs that must already be stained and wet. He’s too young to be restrained. But then who knew what happened beneath Harrison’s clothes? Who even knew how old he was? Hartley has seen his birthday online, has celebrated a couple of them with him, but he isn't naive enough to believe everything he reads.

Adding to the list of things he doesn’t believe: Harrison Wells’ head in his lap, mouth around his cock. Hartley’s thighs twitch. He spreads them, leans back and almost falls, grabbing the back edge of the bar. His chest feels worse than it does on the treadmill, heart pounding in his ears. He holds his breath and tries to stop time, just to take it all in, to _understand_. But this isn’t a chess game, not even speed chess (at which Harrison is absurdly good). It’s Harrison’s lips around him, tongue licking his length, the way his head is moving. Hartley shifts his weight, pushes up with his hips, touches one hand to Harrison’s hair. Not pressing, nice as it might be to play with that little bit of dominance, but feeling. Feeling Harrison Wells suck his cock.

Hartley can’t help but think that he’s been approaching this whole thing from _precisely_ the wrong angle.

But he’s still the one needing, begging: “Don’t stop, God, don’t you dare stop.” He’s the one closing his eyes so tightly he sees stars even _before_ he comes, hips jerking, his arms cramping where he’s been holding himself up, spilling his load down Harrison’s throat.

He’s dizzy when Harrison straightens up, wiping his mouth on his shirt cuff. It only takes two seconds for Hartley to feel utterly absurd, sitting on Harrison’s bar with his dick sticking out of his pants, even if he’s still glistening wet from Harrison’s tongue.

“Are you hungry?” Harrison asks.

Disoriented, confused as to whether this is a genuine question or a hint that Hartley should swiftly repay the favor, Hartley only raises his eyebrows.

Harrison eyes him, considering. “I’ll make you a snack.”

For someone who rarely goes home, Harrison certainly has enough fresh fruit at his disposal, which he seems to take great pleasure in watching Hartley eat. “I feel like your kept boy,” Hartley says as they sit in the lounge, but he eats the grapes anyway, because it’s long past dinner time and he can’t remember lunch. “Should we be wearing togas?”

Harrison doesn’t touch the food, but he pours wine and unbuttons his shirt. Hartley tries to watch without staring. He’d built up Harrison’s body so much in his mind that he’d expected strange tattoos or horrific scarring. What there is, is just a body. Admittedly one with a lot more muscle tone than he’d expected. Hartley swallows his latest grape and reaches for him. 

They kiss amid a divesting of clothes that Hartley – and possibly no one in the history of mankind – has ever managed to do with elegance. But it doesn’t much matter how fucking annoying buttons are, or the way his glasses jam into his eye socket when Harrison pulls his sweater over his head. All he wants is Harrison’s mouth, his hand slid right in through Harrison’s fly.

“Tell me you’re going to fuck me,” he breathes more than says. Although Harrison might want it the other way, and that would be fine too, just so long as he’s not one of those oral-only guys. But some nights Hartley needs a cock in him, and never more so than now.

Harrison gives him that half-smile Hartley guesses he uses so often just to avoid appearing like a dimple-cheeked too-boyish version of himself. Harrison’s too tall and beautifully formed to have ever been much like Hartley, but everyone wants to be taken seriously.

“Relax, Hartley. I always give you what you want in the end, don’t I?”

“I’m not going to pretend that wasn’t innuendo.”

That smile again. Harrison stands and takes off his shirt, which is as much a performance as anything else Harrison does. Look. Look at the great Harrison Wells finally revealing himself. Look at that skinny body usually hid beneath unostentatious suits, which turns out to be not very skinny at all. Hartley bites his tongue looking at him: chest, shoulders, biceps… abs. _Abs._ Harrison is _how_ old?

“When do you find the time to work out?” There could be a gym in the basement here – Ronnie Raymond had campaigned for one at the lab for a while, and got nothing but a basketball hoop out in the parking lot – but time is a greater question. Maybe Harrison just never sleeps.

And below the abs, well… Hartley watches as Harrison jerks open his belt. He should be taking off his own clothes, but he’s too riveted to do more than watch, a little germ of satisfaction kinking its way into his mind at the idea of Harrison Wells naked while he keeps his clothes on. Mostly on. And yet Harrison’s so admirably unconcerned, unselfconscious about it all, about Hartley unreservedly _staring_ hungrily at his half-hard cock, that it only makes Hartley feel more like Harrison’s the one in control. Has always been the one in control.

Hartley clears his throat. “Out of interest,” he says. “The windows…?”

Harrison raises his eyebrows in mild surprise and follows Hartley’s gaze. If the neighbors really could see in, they would be scandalized already. “Appear opaque from outside, of course. I value natural light, but privacy is also desirable.”

Goddamn buttons. In movies people just tore clothes off. In reality, even if he’d wanted to, his shirt is uncooperative, or maybe it’s his fingers. And then Harrison’s finger is under his chin, making him look up. 

“I thought,” Harrison says softly, “that getting you off once would calm you down a little.” He’s already deftly undoing all those fucking buttons without looking when Hartley kisses him. And Hartley touches too, because he _has_ to. Whatever happens from this moment on, there’s no way he can leave without giving his fantasies some shape and form: Harrison’s surprisingly hot, smooth skin. The ripples of ribs and muscle, the slope of hair down to… Harrison finishes with the buttons and straightens up. “Yes?” 

Hartley wriggles out of his shirt.

He swears to himself that he’ll mentally arrange it all later, constructing thoughts and impressions into a coherent narrative he can analyze and over-analyze, like every language he’s ever learned, like every chess game he’s ever played. But he can’t, just _can’t_ now, because Harrison is in his mouth and this is _everything_ , Harrison is everything, and Hartley would half weep with the unrelenting emotion and _relief_ of it if he didn’t have to focus the tiny remaining part of his mind on breathing.

There was a time he’d kept track of the dicks he’d sucked, all those boarding school boys, all those older men when he went to bars and pretended to be something other than a kid. But there had been far too many bad times after that. Too many times he wanted to forget. Harrison, though, stills all that panic within him, and the way Harrison strokes his hair, says, “yes, that’s good Hartley” doesn’t seem so much patronizing as reassuring. Harrison wants him. Harrison might even _need_ him. 

But most of all, Harrison understands him. Which is why, when Hartley stops trailing his hands over Harrison’s ass, down his thighs, and lifts his head from sucking Harrison’s cock, Harrison presses four fingers to his chest and tips him back onto the bed. “Take off your clothes. I’ll be back in a moment.” Harrison makes it all the way to his bar, Hartley watching him, until Harrison casts an extra thought over his shoulder: “And Hartley, take your time.”

Hartley takes his time. Or as much as he can really draw out taking off his pants and shoes and then, after a tiny moment of thought, his underwear. No matter Harrison’s assurances, he still feels exposed in here with all the glass, as though the world is watching, or the whole place might collapse around him in delicate shards. He lies back and stares upward, through the glass ceiling. Out here in the distant suburbs of Central City, it's still possible to see the stars.

“How often do you do this?” he says once Harrison’s almost-silent footsteps draw near.

“Solve for values of ‘this’.”

Hartley manages to compose himself enough to give Harrison a withering look. “How often do you fuck boys in your living room?”

“Not often.” Harrison’s brought lubricant, which is promising. “But then, I have a lot of rooms.”

Hartley smiles. It would be easy, very easy, to just close his eyes and touch himself and let it all happen. But rare as it is to have Harrison naked, it might be rarer to have Harrison all to himself, with no Dr. Snow rushing in with constant questions, no what-are-formal-qualifications Ramon with his stupid grin. “The general opinion is that you’re not interested in sex. A perception I’m sure you cultivate. However, given your moderate level of fame and our current activities… Who _do_ you sleep with, Harrison?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Harrison sits down by him, still impressively hard.

Hartley hums, considers. “People you trust, which means people you employ.” He meets Harrison’s too-blue eyes. “Who have you been fucking from the lab? They’re the ones who wouldn’t talk, aren’t they? Your special projects.” It’s a half-repulsive thought, though, the idea of Harrison touching or even looking at any of them in this way. Ronnie seems too straight, Caitlin too girlish, Ramon too firmly stuck with a mental age of twelve. But what would they guess about him? Hartley – too plain, too arrogant, too _desperate_?

Harrison lays his fingertips softly against Hartley’s lips. “You can be as suspicious and paranoid as you like tomorrow. But tonight, I promise you, there’s no one else here.”

Hartley breathes. Swallows. “You’re here,” he says.

The daybed isn’t the softest thing, really. It’s meant for sitting during cocktail parties, maybe for idle lounging if you happened to be half-naked with the body of an Adonis. (Is there a pool outside? Probably. Hartley wouldn’t mind watching Harrison dripping wet in the summer, swim trunks an electric blue.) But Hartley lies back and lets Harrison come to him, sliding over him, limbs tangling up with limbs. 

He’d expected and half-wanted to be flipped over and crushed into the bed, half-stifled as he came just from the terror of it all. But Harrison kisses him, combs fingers through his unkempt hair as if to see him better, and doesn’t flinch as Hartley tentatively wraps his arms around him, hooks a leg over his hip. Harrison’s still slight, slender, like this. But he’s substantial. He exists right here, his breath on Hartley’s cheeks, skin almost feverish, his cock – _Jesus_ – prodding Hartley’s belly.

“Do you mind?” Harrison asks, reaching to remove Hartley’s glasses. 

Hartley squints even before they come off. “Just don’t go anywhere.”

“I’m all yours,” Harrison says, and whatever passes over his face in the next moment seems to suggest surprise, or regret, or something Hartley can’t understand. But then they’re kissing again and Hartley doesn’t want to think about any of it more than he has to now.

Harrison’s romantic past is something murmured in lab gossip. They all know about his research partner, Dr. Morgan, and her death a dozen years ago. A tragic tale. Hartley can imagine that kind of hurt damaging a man. But no one remains abstinent for a dozen years. Perhaps Harrison doesn’t sleep with women anymore, maybe that’s it, but his fingers inside Hartley are practiced and sure.

A half-strangled gasp comes from Hartley’s throat: who has he ever been with who’d cared about foreplay before? “Oh God.” There’s a live wire running right through him when Harrison moves, thrusts, strokes, does whatever he’s doing that makes Hartley’s back arch and his cock pulse and unholy noises come out of his mouth. He can turn the air blue in six languages, and he does it with glee now, until all he’s saying is “Fuck me, fuck me, please Harrison, please…”

Harrison _hurts_ inside him, that too-full good hurt Hartley won’t admit to when Harrison asks, because it might mean something less than the sense of complete ecstatic wholeness he has with Harrison holding him, moving inside him, tongue in his mouth. If only Harrison smelled of something, drenched himself in cologne so Hartley could lose himself in that as well as the lean body, the hair tight in his fingers, the lips that kiss the air from him.

He’s going to ache all the way inside tomorrow. Not that stupid homophobic “can’t sit down for a week” hurt, but the hurt that means he’ll feel Harrison inside him as he works at his desk, trying not to yawn at Ramon’s reports, suffering through the endless Caitlin-Ronnie soap opera. It’ll remind him that this happened, prolonging their night together, because there might not be another one.

“Hartley.” Harrison’s thumb and forefinger are on his jaw, his tone holding more than a little laughter. “Are you still with me?”

Hartley blinks and bobs his head. “Uh huh.” As if he could be asleep. This is more like something beyond wakefulness, where everything is so intense he needs to slow down time to experience it all, savor every moment of Harrison, beautiful, genius Harrison. _La petite mort._ Not orgasm, but the opposite. He feels he’ll die if this ends.

Harrison, though… Harrison doesn’t break a sweat, fucking him, despite the blazing fire (are those real flames behind the glass?), despite the holy-crap _force_ of him sometimes, his hips smacking the backs of Hartley’s thighs so hard they’ll leave imprints to match his bruised shoulders. All Hartley can do is hold onto him and never let him go.

He comes too quickly, although hours might have passed for all he really knows. The pressure in his cock and incessant _need_ for it bubbling down inside him make him touch himself, and it doesn’t take much to come, watching Harrison. He’d have come without being touched in a minute or two. That or stroked out completely.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says, biting hard on his lip, because it feels _so_ blindingly good, and yet it’s over, come streaked white over his hand and stomach. Over except that he gets to watch Harrison, suddenly realizing that seeing – feeling – Harrison Wells come inside him might be something even better.

But Harrison kisses him and buries his face in Hartley’s shoulder, and it’s only then that Hartley feels that shock of climax electrifying muscles, and Harrison groans a name that’s probably _Hartley_ – because what else would it be? – into his skin.

Hartley holds him close, and time stops.

They have a drink afterward, lying naked by the fire, being young and beautiful, or at least one of the two. Harrison sips his wine and lays his head against Hartley’s shoulder, watching the flames. 

“I’ll call you a car,” Harrison says finally, just as Hartley had been wondering when they might go upstairs. He wants to see Harrison’s bedroom, crawl between expensive sheets, and pretend as though that’s where he spends every night. God. He’d lie at the foot of the bed if Harrison asked him to.

“A car?” It’s late. _Very_ late. If Hartley were at the lab, he’d just pull three chairs together in the staff lounge and call it a night.

Harrison checks his watch. The time doesn’t seem to dissuade him at all. “I have some things to attend to. Don’t worry, I won’t be expecting you at nine. Consider yourself at an official meeting with a vital supplier until at least noon.”

Hartley stares at him. “I… Harrison…” Maybe he’ll find a few dollar bills stuffed in his pants pocket too.

“You need your sleep.” Harrison stands, picking up both their glasses between two fingers, and affectionately musses his hair. “If you stay here I’ll only keep you up.”

While he’s away, Hartley gathers together his discarded clothes and puts them on again with little care, replacing his glasses. What could Harrison possibly be doing at this hour other than sleeping himself? It’s too late even for another, better-looking lover to stop by. 

Harrison’s dressed as well when he comes back, glasses on, tapping away at his phone. “Two minutes,” he says, looking Hartley up and down. He slides the phone into his pocket and reaches to smooth out Hartley’s bent collar. “Still feeling guilty?”

“Feeling discarded.” He knows he sounds petty, sulking as if he'd expected to move in after a first date.

“Hardly,” Harrison says, unless it’s just Hartley’s name again. “You’re my guy. Every day, I need you there by my side. What would I do without you?”

It’s more difficult, now, to look beyond the glasses and glimpse some truth. “ _Haec olim meminisse iuvabit._ ” One day, we’ll look back on this and smile.

Harrison laughs and claps a hand to his shoulder. “I’m smiling now.”

At the door, which seems to belong alongside a moat and drawbridge, Harrison kisses him again, cupping hands to his cheeks. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Hartley,” he says, and trails a finger down over Hartley’s lips. “Be good. It’s all I ask.”

 _And tomorrow night?_ Hartley wants to say, but the door is open and the car is waiting.

He’s already asleep by the time they reach his apartment building: the driver has to shake him hard by the shoulder to wake him. His body is nothing but alcohol and endorphins, and his ears are ringing.


End file.
